My DIY pocketfold invitations

Here are my invitations. Got all my cardstock, pocketfolds, envelopes at CardsandPockets.com for about $200 for 100 invitations. That cost also includes my cardstock for my programs, table numbers, escort cards, etc. which I also plan to DIY. The template I got for $50 from diyweddingtemplates.com.

Ceremony music

So I have always imagined having a string quartet playing during the ceremony.  However, I really can't seem to justify the cost in the budget.  I thought of even hiring just a string trio for just one hour for ceremony only, no cocktail hour but it still seemed too expensive.  Especially since I had to also pay for speakers and microphone for the officiant with my DJ so included in that would be ceremony music too.

But I figure I could still have my DJ playing string quartet music.  So here's the plan for the ceremony music so far.

Prelude
  - Spring from the Four Seasons, Vivaldi
  - Air from Water Music, Handel
  - A Little Night Music, Mozart
  - Meditation from "Thais", Massenet

Processional Songs
  Mothers - Ave Maria, Schubert
  Bridal Party - Canon in D, Pachebel

Bridal Entrance - Bridal Chorus, Wagner

Interlude Song
  Unity Candle/Sand - Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring, Bach

Recessional Song - Wedding March, Mendelssohn

Do you think this is too traditional?  What songs are you thinking of including in your ceremony?

Dress Regret?

So ever since before I got engaged, I had always dreamed of having a Maggie Sottero for my wedding dress.  I just loved her designs and I wanted to look like a princess in a fairytale for my special day.  The dress I was in love with was Decadence.

It had everything I had always dreamed of in a dress...sweetheart neckline, corset back, ballgown, a little bit of bling, lace, and a train.  But when I actually tried it on, it didn't look as good on me as I had imagined.  I ended up getting a different dress.  Also a Maggie Sottero but one that was more simple and elegant although it had some of the original features that I fell in love with.  And it was cheaper too...closer to my original budget of $1000 for the dress as I had budgeted $500 for everything else (acessories, alterations, petticoat, etc.)

So after I put down my deposit on my dress, I started to have second thoughts.  Was my dress too simple?  Maybe I should've just gone with my dream dress after all...you only get married once.  So what if I had gone over budget.  I began to have the dreaded dress regret.  I even ended up posting pictures of me in my dress on a public forum and a lot of those comments reassured me that I had made the right decision after all.

It can be a bit daunting making such an important decision knowing that all eyes will be on you the bride.  This desire for perfection often makes brides start to second guess their decision.  My advice, once you've found "the one", stop looking!  It's similar to meeting your fiance...you fell in love with him for a reason.  Yeah he might not be perfect but he's perfect for you.  That's exactly how I feel about my dress ;-P

Did you have dress regret?  What did you do to overcome it?

Cheap Save the Dates from Vistaprint

So originally I was planning on just emailing out Save the Dates to try and save money. However thanks to Wedding Wire I found an awesome deal on Vistaprint that I couldn't pass up. I mean how can you beat FREE? Yup that's right, just click the link below and get 100 free XL postcards and 25 free business card magnets. What's the catch? Just pay for shipping which comes out to less than $10!

http://slickdeals.net/?sdtid=1517573&sdop=1&sdfid=9&u2=http://www.vistaprint.com/vp/gateway.aspx?S=1309672892&PREURL=/vp/ns/consumer/splash/splash_rack_cards.aspx?xnav=LeftItem&xnid=MarketingMaterials&dng=1061557

Plus you get all the following for free too...again just pay for shipping:

1 free pen 
10 free note cards 
1 free wall calendar 
1 free note pad 
1 XL magnet 
25 free brochures 
50 free rack cards
100 free postcard
140 free return labels 
1 free lawn sign 

1 free hat
250 premium business cards

Cheap DIY candy bars

So I am hopping on the bandwagon of candy bars.  I think it looks cute and makes for a more useful favor as guests get to pick out stuff they like.  I plan on DIY since they seem pretty pricy.  So from my research, the cheapest place to find glass containers seem to be Dollar Tree and Walmart.  Some websites to buy cheap candy are:

www.candywarehouse.com
www.candy.com
www.nuts.com
www.samsclub.com

Here are some inspiration pics:

 

Do you need a theme?

So one of the questions people kept asking me was, "What is the theme of your wedding?"  Since when did weddings need a theme?  For some reason this was very hard for me to figure out.  I mean I had a vision for what I wanted it to be...elegant, romantic, simple, fun, glamorous.  And while these were all adjectives that described what I wanted, it wasn't exactly a theme.

Could my colors be a theme?  I had agonized over just picking these out.  My favorite color was blue so I wanted to incorporate that somehow.  But what shade of blue?  I didn't even realize the myriad of shades until trying to plan a wedding.  Also, there weren't that many blue flowers.  Then I thought about blue and gold since those were my school colors (go Bruins!).  And for an accent color, I'd always loved silver and since I love sparkles and rhinestones...I thought that would be a great color to add in.

But somehow this didn't quite seem enough.  How about our monogram?  That was something we could include in our invitations and on all the stationary elements of the wedding.  But shouldn't a theme incorporate some part of our personalities that made us unique?  That's when the fiance came up with an idea.  We met at a club...maybe our theme could be "nightclub"?  At first I thought this was a silly idea but when I googled it there were actually some cute ways to incorporate it...red carpet entrance, club flyer with info about an after party, etc. Somehow it still wasn't what I was looking for.  Then I thought about an element that I could incorporate into the decor like silver hearts or lovebirds. I still don't know what I'm going to do.  Maybe have no theme at all.

Did you have a theme?  What was/is your theme?

Finding a venue

Once I had my budget figured out, the next thing I knew that I had to do was to find a venue.  This is one of the first decisions that needs to be made as the venue determines what your wedding date will be and sets the tone of the wedding.  I knew I always wanted to have an outdoor ceremony so that meant having a spring or summer wedding to decrease the chances of rain.

I also knew I wanted to have the ceremony and reception in the same place for a couple of reasons:

1.  I figured it would be more convenient for everyone to not have to shuttle between 2 places.
2.  I was hoping to save some money this way as it would be easy to reuse decor and flowers by moving it around.
3.  I would also save money by not having to worry about providing transportation for my bridal party.

Even though I wanted an outdoor ceremony, I preferred having the reception indoors as I imagined my wedding to be more of a formal evening event.  Therefore, I pictured the reception in some kind of ballroom.  Also, the one outdoor reception wedding that I attended it turned out to be quite chilly in the evening and that made it more uncomfortable so for convenience I wanted an indoor reception.

Another thought I had was that it would be convenient if the venue was at a hotel.  Out of town guests could stay there.  Those that were too drunk afterwards could get a room there and not have to worry about driving drunk.  If we wanted we could continue with an after party in one of the rooms.

The only problem was that fancy hotel weddings were not going to be good on a budget.  But on the bright side, most were more of a one stop shop in that most hotel wedding packages included most of the things you would need...tables, chairs, linens, silverware, dance floor, catering, alcohol, etc. so it was more convenient to have to deal with less vendors.  The idea of having to worry about the cost of rentals made me lean more towards the hotel wedding.  By the time you add up all the extra costs, it usually ends up costing close to what the hotel wedding costs without the headache and time wasted. 

So with that decided, I went on www.herecomestheguide.com and started searching for a venue that was a hotel.  Thus began a long process of getting quotes from various places and inputting all of the data into an excel spreadsheet.

However, having a discussion with my fiance, my fiance's family, and my family I discovered a slight problem.  They all preferred the traditional Chinese 10 course banquet dinners for wedding food instead of the traditional American steak/chicken/fish that is usually served at hotels.  They of course wanted to do it at a Chinese restaurant.  But I felt that we normally eat at restaurants all the time and I wanted something a little different and more special for my wedding so I really did not want to have it at a restaurant.  Even though the restaurant would've been so much cheaper!

So since I wanted a hotel wedding and the fiance/family wanted a Chinese 10 course banquet, this ended up narrowing down our choice of venues to exactly 3 locations.  The only hotels that serve the Chinese 10 course banquet were the Universal Hilton, San Gabriel Hilton, and the Pacific Palms.  I had recently attended a wedding at the San Gabriel Hilton and didn't want to have it at the same place so that narrowed my choices down to two.

How did you go about picking a venue?

The wedding budget

So what's the first thing you should do as part of your planning after you get engaged?  Sit down and figure out the budget!  You need to have an idea of how much you can afford to spend and that will help guide you to make every single important decision related to the wedding.  I think most people have an idea of what their total budget will be but without writing everything down, most people end up being surprised by how much they actually spend.  All those little expenses add up!

According to www.costofwedding.com (great website btw to look up the cost for things by zip code), the average cost of a wedding in the US is $25,631.  So when I thought about my budget, I said I wanted to spend about the average amount or $25,000.  Luckily for me, I have been saving up for this day for the last couple of years and had that money already set aside so that was a number that I knew I could afford.  Now some of you might see the name of this blog "L.A. Budget Bride" and think $25k is not exactly a budget wedding.  However, let me tell you that Los Angeles is a really expensive city and I would argue that $25k really is a budget wedding for So Cal.  Of course there are people that have done it for less but you definitely have to sacrifice something big to achieve this.

I knew that due to trying to please my family and his family as well as our friends that we would want to do a Saturday evening wedding where a full plated dinner and alcohol would be served.  That meant that a $10k wedding was really not feasible in trying to accomplish this.  I think when setting the budget you've got to have realistic expectations.  Yes it is a lot of money to be spending on one day but hopefully this is something that you only do once in your life.

So once you have your total budget figured out, the next step is dividing that budget for all of your expenses.  www.theknot.com has a great budget tool that does this automatically for you and is a great starting point.  Here's the rough breakdown that I ended up with for our budget:

Venue/Food/Drinks - $14,000 (this is by far the most expensive part of your budget)
Dress/Alterations/Accessories - $1500
Photography - $3000
Videography - $1000
Florist - $2000
Officiant - $250
Hair/Makeup - $500
Groom's Attire/Tux rentals - $400
Bridesmaid Dresses - $100
Invitations/Paper - $300
DJ - $1000
Cake - $300
Wedding Coordinator - $500
Favors - $150

Total - $25,000

And because I was realistic and knew that most people do end up going over budget and that there were a lot of little expenses that I hadn't factored in, I also "planned" to go over budget by 10%.  So my real ultimate budget was $27,500.  This was of course not including the cost of the rings or honeymoon...oy vey.  With also trying to buy a house in the next year or so, let's just say that we are going to broke for a long time =(

What was/is your wedding budget?

I'm engaged!

I got engaged on June 16, 2012 and I couldn't be more excited to plan my wedding.  I'm discovering so many things that I thought it would be a great idea to document everything that I've learned in the planning process.

So for my first post, I thought it was only appropriate to talk about how I came to start this blog...the day I got engaged.  Now every girl dreams about this day but when it finally does happen, it's better than anything you could have dreamed <3

But at least one part of the dream was right...I always dreamed it would happen on a beach since I love the ocean.  And I always wanted it to have some special meaning and it did.  He took me to the spot where we first kissed at La Jolla Cove and did it there.  Awwww!  I couldn't have asked for anything more.  Kudos to my fiance =P

What's your dream proposal?  How did your fiance actually propose?